News: Faith

Few observers are more hardnosed and skeptical about dialogue with Islam than Sandro Magister. Sometimes he goes overboard, but here he’s probably right to contrast the fawning response by 300 Christian scholars to the Muslim “letter of the 138” to the Pope’s more toughminded, nuanced stance. How many apologies for… READ MORE >

Opinion: Issues

The leader of the Anglican communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams, is advocating that the UK accommodate the sharia law of Islam. While counseling that sharia law must never be allowed to trump basic human rights, the Archbishop believes that in “some cultural and religious settings” Muslims should be allowed to resolve… READ MORE >

News: Faith

“Before the headscarf affair, I was fanatically loyal to my school, extremely fond of Sister Rose, and popular with my friends – ‘the class pet,’ some called me. I had looked up to Sister Rose and empathized with her religiosity. I thought of her tears as she sang a hymn at the nativity play, and I thought of my own tears as I listened to a hamd (an Urdu hymn). With Sister's rejection of my religiosity came an enormous distancing. It pushed me away from my friends and my social circle. I felt like my trust in everything had been broken. Sister had broken me, and I would not be broken like that again… It didn't have to be that way, I often think today… " READ MORE >

News: Culture

“Daniel Pipes has suggested that ‘mak[ing] a distinction between the mainstream Islamists and the fringe ones [is] like making a distinction between mainstream Nazis and fringe Nazis. They’re all Nazis, they’re all the enemy.’ Is this the case? Suppose that, to continue Pipes’s analogy, there had been Nazis who clearly rejected violence, as some who call themselves Islamists have done. Would they not have been meaningfully distinguishable from Hitler’s crew? An anathema so sweeping as Pipes’s can lead to classifying individuals or groups wrongly, or overlooking important transformations in attitude… [R]adical Islamism is a fragile and perishable ideology, and, unless we surrender, there is little possibility that it will triumph. The only question is how much damage it will do before it implodes… anyone who can help us to forestall the worst is worth our trouble to cultivate.” READ MORE >

Opinion: Issues

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is an unusually courageous and thoughtful man, one of the few leaders in Britain willing to risk public outrage in order to point up uncomfortable truths. His lecture yesterday in the Royal Courts of Justice was exactly what is needed in the UK now: a challenge to the Positivism which is in gradual… READ MORE >

Opinion: Issues

When I read Austen Ivereigh’s provocative essay, “Why the Bearded One Is Right About Sharia Law,” defending the recent speech by Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, I was compelled to respond. With all due respect to Mr. Ivereigh, I believe that he and Dr. Williams… READ MORE >

Opinion: Issues

My defense of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s proposals for Britain to accommodate sharia law omitted to mention that the devil is in the detail, as an excellent Reuters report points out, and as Dr. Williams himself indicated. But the recent press, calming now after the storm, confirms the point I was making: as Tom Heneghan, religion… READ MORE >

News: Faith

“Christianity Today editor in chief David Neff, who signed the Yale letter, said the document fulfills its narrow goal of peacemaking. ‘[F]undamental theological differences were not on the table for discussion in these letters," Neff said. "The point of the letter was to say we appreciate you putting the olive branch out there, and we're eager to talk with you.’" READ MORE >

Opinion: Issues

One of the alarming things about the furor over the Archbishop of Canterbury’s lecture at the Royal Courts of Justice is how a call to “think a little harder” about a complex and important issue in our society has resulted in the exact opposite: a lot of people thinking less and shouting louder. The newspapers and other media have led… READ MORE >

News: World

Last December Sarkozy expounded on "’France's essentially Christian roots. A man who believes is a man who hopes,’ said the president. ‘And the interest of the republic is that there be a lot of men and women who hope.’ He advocated a new ‘positive secularism’ that ‘doesn't consider religions a danger, but an asset.’ And he declared, ‘In the transmission of values and in the teaching of the difference between good and evil, the schoolteacher will never be able to replace the priest or the pastor.’" READ MORE >

News: World

“'I can’t get a job, I have no money, I can’t get married, what can I say?’ Mr. Sayyid said… In their frustration, the young are turning to religion for solace and purpose, pulling their parents and their governments along with them. With 60 percent of the region’s population under the age of 25, this youthful religious fervor has enormous implications for the Middle East. More than ever, Islam has become the cornerstone of identity, replacing other, failed ideologies: Arabism, socialism, nationalism.” READ MORE >

News: World

“The very public conversion of high-profile Italian journalist Magdi Allam — who was baptized by Pope Benedict in Rome on Saturday — is only the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, Islamic cleric Ahmad al-Qatani stated on al-Jazeera TV a while back that some six million Muslims convert to Christianity annually, many of them persuaded by Botros’s public ministry… Many Western critics fail to appreciate that, to disempower radical Islam, something theocentric and spiritually satisfying — not secularism, democracy, capitalism, materialism, feminism, etc. — must be offered in its place. The truths of one religion can only be challenged and supplanted by the truths of another. And so Father Zakaria Botros has been fighting fire with fire.” READ MORE >